All In: Monday, April 7 Devotional

The Christian faith was never meant to be an easy road, a painless journey, or a simple three-step adherence to a set of beliefs. To follow Jesus demands we give everything and invest all we have, and are, for the One who has laid down everything for us. He gave His life for us.

The question is: Will we give our lives for Him?

He was a pastor, theologian, and author. His book on discipleship, which has since become a classic, was published when he was about thirty years old. Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not live to celebrate his fortieth birthday. He was arrested by the Gestapo in April 1943 and executed by hanging in a Nazi concentration camp in April 1945. His life ended only three weeks before the Germans surrendered to the Allied Forces and World War II ended. Why was a German Lutheran pastor imprisoned in a Nazi prison camp for two years and then executed? The answer is simple: because he followed Jesus, no matter what the cost. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was all in. He saw the evil that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement was bringing into the world and across his own country of Germany — and he stood in opposition. He joined a resistance movement because his faith in Jesus and commitment to follow the Savior compelled him to push back. He could not remain idle as countless Jewish men, women, and children were being persecuted and executed. His faith called him to dangerous and costly action. Dietrich Bonhoeffer went all in for Christ and it cost him his life.

Discussion:

1. Bro. Lyle started this series talking about one-way missionaries who packed everything they needed for their missionary journeys into a coffin. If you packed everything you needed to follow Jesus for the rest of your life into a wooden coffin, what would you take with you?

2. Read Luke 9:23-25 How do you think the people around Jesus understood Him when he asked them:

Deny Yourself Take Up Your Cross

Follow Me Lose Your Life

3. Read Matthew 4:18-22. In this short passage, four different men have their own moment of reckoning with Jesus. Each one leaves his nets (his vocation, the family business, place of security) to follow Jesus. What does that kind of devotion look like today?

4. What areas of your life is God calling you to go all in following Jesus? What can you do to become more engaged, invested, sold out, and dangerous for Jesus?